Detection of organic and non-organic materials within a sample is an increasingly important aspect of healthcare for individuals and other types of monitoring systems (i.e., food, chemical, pharmaceutical, medical, and other industries). The development of non-invasive measurement techniques for monitoring biological and metabolic agents within human tissue is an important aspect of diagnosis therapy of various human diseases and may play a key role in the proper management of diseases. Examples of a biological agent that may be monitored are glucose and Beta Amyloid (responsible for Alzheimers).
Many optical techniques for sensing different materials in living tissue have been in development over the last 50 years. These methods have been based upon florescent, near infrared and mid-infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, photoacoustics, optical coherence tomography and other techniques. However, none of these techniques that have been tried have proved completely satisfactory. Thus, an improved non-invasive technique enabling the detection of concentrations of various materials within a human body or other types of samples would have a number of applications within the medical field.